"Twelve Years a Slave: The Autobiography of Solomon Northup" by Sue Eakin

Hard-working Solomon Northup, an educated free man of color in 1841, enjoys family life with his wife and three children in Saratoga, New York. He delights his community with his fiddle playing and has positive expectations of all he meets. When he is deceived by "circus promoters" to accompany them to a musical gig in the nation's capital, his life takes an unimaginable turn. He awakens in shackles to find he has been drugged, kidnapped and bound for the slave block in D.C. After Solomon is shipped to New Orleans, he is assigned his slave name and quickly learns that the mere utterance of his true origin or rights as a freeman are certain to bring severe punishment or death. While he endures the brutal life of a slave in Louisiana's isolated Bayou Boeuf plantation country, he must learn how to play the system and plot his escape home. For 12 years, his fine mind captures the reality of slavery in stunning detail, as we learn about the characters that populate plantation society and th